Campus Unrest Is Coming to a City Near You
15th May 2024
It is 10 p.m. at the University of Texas at Austin’s South Mall. The night is quiet, a stark contrast to just the day before when UT Austin became the latest battleground of the culture war on American college campuses. All over the country this spring, anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protesters set up squalid camps on well-manicured quads, blocking and storming buildings. Revolutionaries clad in Covid masks and the keffiyeh favored by terrorists the world over spent the semester hounding Jewish students in libraries, dorms and whatever other structures they could seize. They demanded that institutions cut ties with Israel, topped off with requiring criminal pardons and straight “A”s for themselves, lest their noble impulses hinder their career prospects.
UT Austin president Jay Hartzell, having witnessed such protest theater play out nationwide following the 10/7 Hamas attacks, was prepared when his pupils attempted to build their own encampment on April 23. With Hartzell’s blessing, campus police and Texas state troopers, clad in riot gear, cleared out protesters from the South Mall. This led to clashes as the students fought back and resisted arrest. It did not take long for people on social media to temporarily take their attention off the protest epicenter at Columbia and notice the chaos unfolding in Texas.
The next day, students and faculty staged a walkout to denounce what they claimed had been unfair treatment by the college and law enforcement. A small group of pro-Israel demonstrators stood off to one side, chanting, “Bring them home!” in reference to Hamas’s kidnapping victims, and “Am Yisrael Chai!” While the tension between the two groups was high, no major fighting broke out. Campus police watched the protest from the steps of the UT Tower.